MOSCOW, June 2. /TASS/. The issue of the retirement age should be widely discussed in society to avoid possible shocks when a final decision is taken, Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of the Federation Council, or upper house of the Russian parliament, wrote in her column the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily published on Tuesday.

"The problem of the retirement age is not a contrived issue," she wrote. "Not a single country facing similar demographic problems has managed to evade it." According to Matviyenko, "both detailed expert elaboration and a wide public discussion are needed" to avoid possible shocks for people.

Today, the overwhelming majority of Russians are not ready for immediate adoption of such measure [raising the retirement age]," she wrote. "It is seen from the sociological data, people’s appeals to the Federation Council, my meetings with people in Russian regions."

"The upper house is ready for a close constructive cooperation with the government on that issue," she said, adding that this subject had been included into the basic guidelines for the Russian government’s activities till the years 2018.